Mayweather, Bloodied but Still Unbeaten, Defeats Maidana by Decision

By JOHN ELIGON

May 4, 2014

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. has made such an art of dominance that anything less is quite puzzling. And his opponent Saturday night was not expected to challenge that mastery.

But Marcos Maidana, a rough, hard-hitting, scrappy and sometimes erratic Argentine, made Mayweather bleed. He made him pant and sweat and cringe, and at one point even tackled Mayweather through the ropes.

Maidana made Mayweather earn a victory at the MGM Grand Garden Arena that improved his record to 46-0.

Mayweather won by majority decision, with one judge scoring it a draw and the other two giving him the fight by sizable margins.

Although Mayweather seemed to get the upper hand on Maidana in the latter rounds, the fight remained competitive throughout.

Mayweather threw about half as many punches (426) as Maidana did (858), but he landed nine more (230). Still, the 221 punches Maidana landed were the most by any Mayweather opponent in the 38 fights for which CompuBox has been keeping statistics.

Early on, Mayweather let Maidana, 30, bring the fight to him in close quarters, as if to make it more exciting than it needed to be. Maidana threw many looping punches and pinned Mayweather, 37, to the ropes. Maidana was aggressive and rough, and he and Mayweather tangled several times. The referee, Tony Weeks, stopped the fight at one point to warn Maidana for the roughhousing.

“A tough, competitive fight that the fans wanted to see,” Mayweather said in the ring afterward. “I wanted to give the fans an exciting fight.”

“He never hurt me with a punch,” Maidana said. “He wasn’t even that tough. I thought I won the fight.”

Mayweather carefully chose his spots early, getting in a couple of quick left hooks and straight shots to the body that seemed to stun Maidana. But Maidana methodically kept coming forward and smothering Mayweather. A cut opened above Mayweather’s right eye in the fourth round.

It was not until the middle of the fight that Mayweather seemed to start getting his distance and tagging Maidana with quick, stinging blows. Still, this was not the precise, dominating Mayweather that people were used to, and Maidana continued to smother him at times.

In the ninth round, Mayweather seemed to channel his peak form and asserted himself. He struck Maidana (35-4) with a straight right and moments later got him with a short overhand right. Later in the round, Mayweather bounced off the ropes to pepper Maidana with a two-punch combination. From there, it was closer to a vintage Mayweather performance.

“If the fans want to see it again, we can do it again,” Mayweather said.

Although Mayweather was the big attraction Saturday night, there was a strong Argentine contingent, many of the fans wearing soccer jerseys and chanting, “Olé, olé, olé, olé, Chino! Chino!” as they referred to Maidana by his nickname.

Mayweather took his ring-entrance theatrics to new heights. Not only was Lil Wayne rapping alongside him, but he had a Las Vegas variety show of sorts precede him toward the ring as fake money with his face on it fell from the rafters.

As with any Mayweather fight, there was much hype swirling this time around. But this time, the outside distractions seemed to be louder than usual and sometimes drowned out talk of the fight, perhaps in part because few people expected Maidana to give Mayweather a challenge.

Mayweather made big headlines in the week leading to the fight when he said he had broken up with his fiancée because she had had an abortion; he also released a picture he said was a sonogram of the fetus. He talked about wanting to buy the Los Angeles Clippers and even had an introspective moment with the news media when he said he had contemplated retiring after Saturday night’s bout. That was widely interpreted as a fleeting thought; he has three fights left on his contract with Showtime and has flirted with ending his career in the past.

Perhaps one of the biggest stories surrounding the fight, in boxing circles at least, was the rift within Golden Boy Promotions, which has led the promotion of Mayweather’s last several fights in conjunction with Mayweather’s budding promotion company.

Oscar De La Hoya, the president and founder of Golden Boy, has been at odds with the company’s chief executive, Richard Schaefer. Much of the rancor appears to be centered on De La Hoya’s seeming desire to do business with Top Rank, the promotion company run by Bob Arum. Top Rank promoted Mayweather and De La Hoya early in their careers, but Mayweather has long been at odds with Arum, and Schaefer has said that he will never work with Arum.

Before Saturday night’s fight, De La Hoya held a news conference in which he acknowledged having differences with Schaefer and said he was eager to work them out. De La Hoya reiterated his desire to work with Arum and said the two had met to catch up on life but had not discussed business. Speculation in boxing circles is that Schaefer might leave Golden Boy and team with Al Haymon, a close Mayweather adviser, to start a promotion company. Mayweather has expressed his admiration and has said Schaefer would be welcome to work with his company. But De La Hoya said he had no plans to force Schaefer out of Golden Boy.

Much of the gossip about tensions within the boxing business was more intriguing than the expectations for the fight between Mayweather and Maidana. While Maidana has big punch potential, which he showed off several months ago in a defeat of Adrien Broner, a Mayweather protégé, Mayweather seemed to have a distinct skill advantage.

But if anticipation was lacking for the Mayweather-Maidana fight, it was made up for in a first-rate undercard that featured a couple of bouts that could have been main events in their own right.

Broner (28-1) returned to the ring for the first time since losing to Maidana to beat Carlos Molina in a unanimous decision (17-2-1) in a superlightweight bout. In the fight right before the main event, England’s Amir Khan (29-3) defeated Brooklyn’s Luis Collazo (35-6) by unanimous decision. Khan was considered a top prospect for Mayweather’s next challenger.